Few lives begin without pain. Few lives end in a dissimilar manner. Maybe that's one of the reasons life is so highly prized, being bookended with the greatest pain one has ever known in the beginning and ending with the loneliest suffering one will ever experience.

  Such sufferings may be one of the reasons life is prized among the different ways dust can dance, but it is certainly not the only reason.

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  The sharp bars of his cage cut into her arms as Ludo considered the value she and others would lay on her own life. She sighed and shifted her weight so that her confinement cut into other areas, just as scarred and tormented as the parts she temporarily relieved.

  Once her discomforts were sufficiently balanced, she once again reached out through one of the few holes they had not yet sealed off.